[QUOTE=Darklingske;688947]R4: Burn 0-2 Yihaaa, another combodeck to face. G2 I have WoW in my opener and start bouncing his singleton land every turn. Unfortunatly he has a burnspells galore and I die in a pretty fast way.
QUOTE]
If burn is so difficult, could we try the energy field/wheel of sun and moon soft lock? It looks like the chills in the SB are not enough.
I have a dumb question: which is the purpose of the lone maindeck Mindbreak trap in some builds? I donīt understand it
Since it seems combo is quite annoying for this deck, is there any cards we could cut from SB/MB to add in more combo hate? 4 MBT just doesn't seem to do it.
[QUOTE=manugl84;688952]The lone Mindbreak Trap makes a hard lock, when you bounced all your opponents permanents. Some decks like burn can just replay a land and burn you for 3. When you have Mindbreak Trap in Hand and Eternal Wittness in play you can effectively remove all your opponents spells they will cast from the game. Some people forget that you can hardcast traps, too.....
That's definitely a lot of bad matchups, but I think you're right; if you can't get more than 2 wins in 5 rounds, then it might not be the deck for you.
I will say, there are a lot of tools you could be running in the sideboards if you're struggling against some decks. Cuneo didn't get to 5th place on just his wits, the MTGO metagame is completely saturated with burn decks and various combos since Force of Wills are so expensive and thus not really around to keep decks like Belcher in check. If you're losing to decks that are common on MTGO, I'd suggest starting with Cuneo's sideboard and going from there. I don't particularly like Living Wish myself, mostly because it cuts into SB space and makes you play weak cards like Scavenging Ooze and Verduran Enchantress and Emrakul. I do think that Burn has a very rough time beating something like Energy Field, which is something Cuneo ran. It would be pretty greedy to try and board into a full-on combo, like Wheel of Sun and Moon or Rest in Peace. But we're talking about having access to three different colors, and artifacts, with which to solve your bad matchups. The cards are definitely out there.
How about Arcane Labratory as a SB option against any combo decks? It shuts down High Tide and makes Show and Tell decks manageable.
If we have some enchantress in play we still draw plenty of cards and once we get words of wind, we can bounce arcane labs back and combo to win.
That's not a great answer just because it makes you take a million turns before you can combo off. It also means that you can only play one spell a turn, where they can play two since they're going to have instants and you only have enchantments. If you're looking for something to screw over High Tide, In the Eye of Chaos is going to slow them down by at least a turn, maybe a few, since a lot of the key cards for them (High Tide, Cunning Wish, Turnabout, bounce spells, Blue Sun's Zenith) are instants. If you can land an In the Eye of Chaos, then GSZ for a Gaddock Teeg later, all while holding a Flusterstorm, they're in a lot of trouble. If you're really really worried about High Tide, Pithing Needle on Candelabra also buys you a lot of time, and is a fine card in a lot of matchups.
I think everyone needs to test a little more. A lot of matchups look really bad in theory, but once you start playing them, you'll find that you can board in a pretty stifling convergence of hate for any given deck to the point where they just can't beat you before you beat them. It's really not about boarding in that one card that a combo deck can't possibly beat, more about playing a series of soft-lock pieces that they can deal with, but not quicker than you can assemble the combo and leave them with one land ever and facing down a board stacked with hate.
So having been patrolling this thread for a while and playing the deck myself, I have a few questions and ideas of my own I would like to put forth.
Firstly:
What Artifacts/Enchantments are we super worried about that we need that much removal in the sideboard? Or even the seal in the main. (I personally have cut it in favor of Helix Pinnacle as an alternate win, just curious from the main list). I like the carpet of flowers because the format is very blue, and its a one mana enchantment, when seal is good its fine, but other than that its a 2 mana enchantment that becomes harmonize for half the cost.
For the Dueling Grounds in the SB: I have found it to be good when I get it, but not always necessary even when I bring it in, it tends to just be more of a 5th Elephant grass basically. Just curious as to why this has stuck around in the SB as well.
Second:
I would like to offer forth the sideboard I have been working on for a little while, it is a bit skewed for my small local meta, but as I am planning on attending GP Denver, I have been trying to broaden it a little bit, so any critiques would be appreciated, as well as just offering up my insight onto the subject.
My SB:
2x Chill
1x Dueling Grounds
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Harmonic Sliver
3x In the Eye of Chaos
1x Krosan Grip
3x Mindbreak Trap
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Verduran Enchantress
That's an interesting sideboard. It does seem a little extreme to me to have 3 of both Mindbreak Trap and In the Eye of Chaos. If you're not having any issues with creature decks, then feel free to play or not play whichever cards you need to in the deck/sideboard. I don't personally think that a dedicated win condition is at all necessary, given that it doesn't do anything for you unless you've already won the game; in that slot, I'd just play the third Carpet of Flowers if you don't think that you need a Seal of Primordium main.
Personally, I've found Energy Field to be a card that a whole set of decks just can't beat if you play correctly. Goblins, Elves, Merfolk, Burn, any decks that don't or can't board in dedicated Disenchant effects are going to have a whole host of problems with that card, as long as you don't play out non-basics (if they have Wasteland) or creatures that can get killed (if they have burn or Jitte). I think that the creature matchups should be pretty solidly in our favor, but it's a one-card answer to at least those three or four decks in the format, which is probably worth looking at.
This deck is a clinic in deck construction. Every single slot is perfectly chosen, and the sideboard is no less important. If you're not squeezing every last bit of utility out of every slot in the deck, you will be punished at some point. Even if you don't think you'll need it, if there are dead cards in any matchups, you should have cards that you can bring in so you don't get stuck with a Carpet of Flowers against Elves or an Elephant Grass against UW Miracles. It's just as important to not overboard, but there it is.
As far as what Seal of Primordium targets that we're worried about, just about the only one I can think of that will actually stop you is Pithing Needle, though I suppose Nevermore is also a card. There are lots of things that can slow you down, like Ethersworn Canonist or Chalice of the Void or Sphere of Resistance, all of which you should have some kind of answer to. There is technically at least one deck that plays Pithing Needle main (the new 12-post variants) so it might be necessary to have a Seal of Primordium main, though the odds of facing off against a 12-post deck, and having them hit correctly with their Pithing Needle, and then not being able to beat them 2 of 3, is awfully long odds to be frank. It's probably still correct, though there's a chance that you'd get more utility over the span of a tournament with the 3rd Carpet of Flowers, for instance. You can always bring it in for games 2 and 3. I'd chalk that spot up to preference, like I said, though it's probably just not correct to have a dedicated kill card in the main, if not anywhere in the 75.
Theoretically you could find your living wish and wish for harmonic sliver to deal with a maindeck Pithing Needle. However I had one game where I actually wanted to have Seal of Primordium to sacrifice to itself. I'd drawn a lot with enchantress effects and had a lot of mana but no more enchantments, but I had drawn an eternal witness that could recur seal of primordium and continue to go off. Granted this is a very corner case.
What do people think of Mystic Remora as a card to board in against decks with a lot of disruption, and/or storm and high tide or any other deck that plays a lot of noncreature spells? It can draw you to your force of wills and basically acts as protection against their counterspells on your enchantress effects.
If you want a specific card against mono-color decks (burn, high tide, elves, etc.) mana maze is good against most of them. I've had it in my sideboard for a month now as an elf hoser, and we occasionally have a high tide player as well. It's basically a nightmare for them. I am playing bant right now, which means a single sterling grove makes it twice as good, and two of them makes me unbeatable unless they can wish for reverent silence, or have sided it in. I prefer the original engine, but I like this alternative take on enchantress and have been keeping an eye on it since it started.
Mystic Remora is interesting, and one of my very favorite cards. Against a lot of decks, it could very easily function like Compost in the Dredge matchup, where you land it and then they can't really do anything unless they want to draw you into your actual hate cards. It's definitely something worth considering.
As for that corner case, Seal of Removal functions in the same way with Eternal Witness, basically turning those two cards into a Jayemdae Tome for every enchantress that you have in play, that you can use infinitely (with infinite mana, of course). It's way more likely that you'd run into a Seal of Removal before a Seal of Primordium, though I suppose that it could happen.
On Mana Maze, I haven't tested it, but my gut tells me that it would screw us only slightly less than them. It's not very often that you would want to, or be able to, go green spell, blue spell, green spell, blue spell....given that the deck is almost 3:1 green spells to blue spells. And against something like High Tide, they would deal with it the same way that they would deal with an Arcane Laboratory or similar effect, by going Merchant Scroll for bounce one turn, bounce EOT and then go off. Incidentally, it would also make Flusterstorm unable to protect whatever blue bounce they have aimed at it. I guess it has game against Elves, but there are definitely cards that Elves can't beat that don't seriously disrupt your own ability to go off.
Hey guys so will be playing at a free local Win-A-Goyf tournament at the LGS tomorrow (we don't get any big legacy events in NZ). This is my list:
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Argothian Enchantress
2 Eternal Witness
4 Elephant Grass
4 Utopia's Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
4 Seal of Removal
4 Enchantress's Presence
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Words of Wind
1 Seal of Primordium
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Living Wish
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Tropical Island
1 Dryard Arbor
1 Savannah
7 Forest
2 Island
Sideboard:
4 Flusterstorm
2 Meekstone
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Dueling Grounds
1 Verduran Enchantress
1 Krosan Grip
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
I want to try make one more space in SB for combo, but not sure what to cut and also not sure what hate card to play (MBT, ItEoC or FOW). Maybe I can cut the Dueling Grounds now that I play Meekstone? But I feel like I still want it for decks like Goblins. Also I was thinking maybe even an Angel of Despair in SB for Show and Tell but that's probably bad.
I'm not sure how useful my SB will be to someone running Living Wish (as I've said, I'm not), but here's my current sideboard that's getting tested:
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Compost
2 Flusterstorm
1 Mystic Remora
1 In the Eye of Chaos
1 Krosan Grip
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Energy Field
1 Dueling Grounds
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Oblivion Ring
As of right now, I'm running 3 Carpet of Flowers and 0 Seal of Primordium main, along with 1 Flusterstorm. If I decide to go with a Seal of Primordium main, I'll just swap it out for the 3rd Carpet of Flowers. I'm testing Mystic Remora, which is currently in the place of 1 Mindbreak Trap, but it should be just as good in the combo matchups and also has uses in most other matchups. Also, Kitchen Finks is theoretically the sauce against Burn, while also being quite good against decks like Goblins and Zoo. The fact that you can Green Sun's Zenith for it is awesome, and once you go off, you can gain infinite life, which will put the game out of reach for any deck that you bring it in against. But that's just icing; the main reason for it is to gain 4 life and trade for 2 creatures (or burn spells), essentially putting you way, way ahead in a few matchups that were previously coinflips.
Ben, since you're in Bant colours now, could you share your current list?
Thanks in advance!
I posted something on Elves about this, but I think we may want to look into whether or not Dryad Arbor is correct. I ran the probabilities, and they were way, way closer than I thought they would be. I know that earlier iterations of Cuneo's Enchantress build ran Dryad Arbor, and then he decided to cut it, preferring Chrome Mox as an additional accelerant. Just curious as to everyone else's thoughts.
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